A few years back Ward Connerly tried and to get his Racial Privacy Initiative passed in California as a ballot referendum. The initiative would have outlawed government collection of racial identity information on the theory that the less the government knew about racial identity the less it could implement racial preferences. Well, in France estimates of how well racial groups do are all pretty speculative because the government either does not collect or refuses to publish by race breakdowns of school performance, incarceration rates, unemployment rates, average income, and assorted other measures. One can come across articles claiming that, for example, 70% of the people French prisons are of Arab Muslim and black Muslim extractions or that the French military is anywhere from 10% to 23% Muslim. But these are all rough estimates by people who are eyeballing particular institutions. France does not have the huge bodies of statistical evidence by race that the United States has.

France's attempt at racial blindness has failed at preventing race from becoming a big political issue and it has failed to make all races and ethnic groups perform equally well. This has become a political problem and the French government started making noises about implementing racial preferences even before the riots by Muslim ethnic groups. Perhaps the French government moved so slowly to put down the riots in part because the government wanted to use the riots to build support for a racial preferences system by using the riots to illustrate the depth of France's problems with certain immigrant groups.

Nobody in Fajullah hates anybody more than the WSJ Propositionists
hate the French. James
Taranto of the WSJ, for example, recently
insinuated that 3,000 French people hadn't really
died in the August heat wave—the Frogs probably just made it up
because 3,000 Americans died on 9/11!

The irony, and it's an instructive one, is that France has officially sported a Proposition Nation ideology for
200 years. To any passing Martian, it would look almost identical to the one advocated by Taranto and Co.

The standard neocon response to immigration, clearly seen for example in a derivative thinker like Tamar Jacoby, is that mass immigration would be all hunky-dory if it weren't for those evil leftist intellectuals (probably of French descent) who seduce innocent immigrants into
identity politics, affirmative action, etc.

But France shows that you can follow all the convenient neocon ideas and still have minority groups rioting in the streets.

The truth is this: the
quantity and
quality of the immigrants matter more than the details of how you treat them.

Of course, the French won't be allowed to discuss any effective solutions for their problem—such as the push-pull plan to encourage Muslim emigration I outlined on Sunday.

And, of course, free speech—never France’s strong point—will have to be replaced by
“anti-hate” laws to suppress the inevitable native protests, especially when affirmative action is seen to be failing.

The neconservative "Proposition Nation" theory fails in empirical practice. But the neocons are, as they continually demonstrate, unempirical ideologues. They are promoting false and harmful myths about human nature. They are wrong on immigration. They are wrong on foreign policy.

I agree with much of what you have to say, in general. However, in this post where you discredit the Proposition nation concept, you are leaving out a large part of the story about France and its immigrants. France, as you know well, has a very socialistic economy. There are many regulations on economic activity and the kinds of businesses that immigrants in the U.S. typically start to create lives for themselves (restaraunts, laundromats, convenience stores, etc) are not possible options in France because of such regulations and laws. There is no doubt that this is a big part of the problem that France is having. The riots in France are as much an indictment of socialism as it is of unrestricted immigration, if not more so.

Consider that the U.S. has 4-6 million immigrants from the middle-east. In fact, the Detroit area has the largest population of Arabs in any single urban area anywhere outside the middle-east itself. They also have a per capta income slightly higher than that of the "white" population in general. They tend to be small business owners. In deed, my best friend from undergrad school is a Lebanese Arab, a fairly devout muslim, and he gets on well in the U.S. (just bought a $400K home in Chandler, AZ). I think this is the difference between a free-market capitalist economy that creates lots of growth opportunities vs. a stagnant socialist economy that offers no opportunity at all.

For what its worth, I generally agree with you, Steve Sailor, and others on the notion that people of certain cultures have a difficult time integrating into a modern, western society as well as unrestricted immigration, in general. I also think that you are spot on about the benefits of educated immigrants vs. uneducated immigrants. The middle-eastern immigrants here in the U.S. seem to be high IQ people who are well educated (especially the Iranians that came here in 1979). The muslim immigrants that are in France and other European countries, on the other hand, seem to be the low IQ dregs with no education (unfortunately like many of the latino illegal immigrants here in the U.S.). You need to consider this factor as well.

Given the above, it is not clear to me if the French "intifada" is really a "muslim vs. west" thing. It may be more of a "low IQ underclass" thing. Steve Sailor seems to think so and so do I.

European economise employ a smaller fraction of their low IQ people than does the American economy. Certainly some of the problem we are seeing in France is amplified by this fact. However, Islam's cultural effect is to amplify and channel resentment and frustration. Take these same people and raise them without Islam and they've be behaving more like other low IQ groups: high general crime and violence but not much political violence.

A much higher percentage of US Arabs came via US educational institutions. Also, a much higher percentage are Christians.

Randall, France's model of assimilation worked very well for immigrants
from southern and eastern Europe. It's only broken down recently with the
arrival of large numbers of North African Arabs and sub-saharan Africans.
It seems there's an IQ threshold neccessary for the proposition nation
theory of assimilation to work.

Culture is also an important factor. The rigid Islamic culture of the African
immigrants makes it difficult for them to live in France without a degree of
tension. Even successful African immigrants often feel alienated from French society.
Predominately Chinese neighborhoods in the 13th Arondisement and Belleville have economic
and social characteristics similar to those in the African neighborhoods, but their residents
tend to more easily reconcile with French culture. So you don't really see much ethnic and
racial tension between the French and Chinese immigrants, even with differing levels
of economic success.

You basically answered my question. I was aware that there are a fair number of Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants in France. I was not aware of their economic status (rich or poor). You say that the Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants are about the same level as the North Africans. This seems uncharacteristic of Chinese in particular, whom do tend to be economically sucessful in other places. If this is the case, this supports the arguments of Randall, Sailer, Fred Reed, and others who say this is both an "islam vs west" as well as "low IQ undercoulture" thing.

Tim's saying what he's saying based on impressions. We do not have the detailed data needed to measure Vietnamese and Chinese performance in France. For a comparison to mean anything we'd need to compare by number of generations present in France. If first generation Chinese who've only been in France for 5 or 10 years are living as poorly as 3rd generation Arabs then that says little about their trajectory.

There is a definitive test of if the riots are an "islam vs. west" thing or a "socialism" lack of opportunity thing. That was what Tim points out in his post about the Chinese immigrants. Since there are Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants in France, it would be useful to know if they are just as poor and isolated as the muslim and African immigrants. If they are AND they are not rioting, then we know that these riots really are a "muslim" thing. If the Chinese and Vietnamese are more prosperous than the muslims, then my explanation may well be correct.

No, absolute poverty comparisons are not a measure of whether this is "Islam vs. The West".

Why don't poor college students all riot against the system every year? After all, they have very little money. Absolute poverty isn't the sole cause of rioting that has an economic motivation. One's perceived prospects matter a great deal.

Some 17 year old Muslim kid whose grandparents and parents live in France and have not had success has a different perspective on the system. Suppose he dropped out of school at age 16 because he was unable to understand what he was being taught. He knows the lives of two previous generations of his family. He looks around and sees he has lousy prospects. His absolute level of poverty didn't change when he dropped out of school. He's still mooching off his parents and his parents might or might not be working. But his expectations have gotten worse as he's come to realize he's got no way upward.

Contrast that with a first Chinese immigrant who is learning French, perhaps learning some technical skills, who has a smart mind and who knows it. He's got a very different attitude. That immigrant, like the college student, could be even poorer than the 17 year old Muslim. But he's got Great Expectations. He doesn't see himself as a loser.

As for the non-Muslim Africans: The French government doesn't want to let us know the religious and ethnic breakdown of the rioters.

Neocons want us to have a forward engagement policy with the worst of the world, and no effective defense against, but openness to the world's worst of everything. By denying reponsibility to the nation, they get to use a mendacious value system that would have us average everything down to the world's minimum standards, which are abysmal. The trick that tranzis and neocons use is to address political questions out of relation to whether what is proposed will increase the level of aggression in the jurisdiction for which the decision is to be made. This allows them to say, but isn't it better to have more immigrants improve their incomes by moving here, or be less tyrannized by emigrating, and so on. What is missing from that faux moralizing, isn't it the effect on those who pay for this, in terms of increase of aggression on them?

The city hit hardest by race riots in the US in the last half century has been Los Angeles, with huge riots in 1965 and 1992. Yet, blacks in Los Angeles were hardly the most deprived economically or socially of all the blacks in the country. For example, when the Watt's riots hit in 1965, blacks made up 20% of the City Council, more than their share of the population, and in 1992, a black had been mayor of Los Angeles for the last 19 years.

When I was talking about comparative economic status, I was including future expectation as well. We all know that many students are currently lacking in money, but expect to make up for it in their future careers. What I was refering to was if the Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants face the same bleak prospects as do the North Africans. If this is indeed the case and, yet, they are not rioting, then this would be the clearest indication that the riots are really a muslim "intifada". If the Chinese and Vietnamese are better off than the North Africans, or they believe themselves to have better future prospects than the North Africans, then the rioting might be a violent reaction to a lack of opportunity and/or a muslim intifada. As such, I stand by my point.

Of course, if the Chinese and Vietnamese are better off than the North Africans, then all of the politically incorrect questions such as culture and IQ must be asked. If the French really are racists or feel that their culture is superior to anyone elses, why would they be any less racist towards East Asian people than towards North Africans? If the East Asian immigrants are better off than the North Africans, racism and discrimination clearly cannot be blamed for the riots.

As side note, my wife, who is Japanese, has visited France. She feels that the french (and other European people) are much more racist than Americans are.

Of course, the French press isn't about to tell anyone the ethnic breakdown of who's rioting and who's not. Afterall, they are more PC than even our press is.

You might want to consider the fact (not well known today) that Japanese-Americans were very active participants in the Watts riots of 1965, whereas Korean-Americans were the initial TARGETS of the LA riots of 1992. This alone should tell you alot about the relative characteristics of East Asian and black people. Like, why have the Japanese-Americans uplifted themselves out of poverty and the blacks haven't. Especially considering that racism in 20th century California has just as intense against East Asians as it was against black.

As you have said many times on your site: There is an 800 pound gorilla in the room that noone wants to talk about.

Clearly the four policemen who beat Rodney King were neo-cons trying to promote "proposition nation." RP has cleared up the mystery as to motivation. Of course. If anything is wrong, neo-cons are apparently at the heart of the problem. This will make understanding the world much simpler.

Since the pro-mass immigration neocons argue that nearly everyone in the world loves freedom and democracy (really, I'm not making this up) basically they see the whole world as proto-Americans trapped under the rule of corrupt small elites running un-American governments. In the neocon view these downtrodden oppressed folks are all just waiting to get free and start respecting everyone's rights to freedom of religion, speech, property, etc.

I've pointed out elsewhere that the Iraq occupation 'strategy' reeks of this philosophy. The neocons assumed that the Iraqis would welcome their liberators and spontaneously build a statue of liberty in the middle of the Tigris. Nope.

"As side note, my wife, who is Japanese, has visited France. She feels that the french (and other European people) are much more racist than Americans are."
Just think for how many decades France was a refuge for talented American blacks fleeing
discrimination in the US. Josephine Baker,for example and many jazz musicians and writers. A truly racist society would be an unlikely haven for such people.
http://www.press.uillinois.edu/pre95/0-252-01684-X.htmlFrom Harlem to ParisBlack American Writers in France, 1840-1980
Michel Fabre

"A rich resource for a deeper understanding of the fascination France and Paris have long held for black Americans, especially writers, painters, and musicians. . . . A must for all academic and general readers."
-- Choice

If what you say is correct, then racism and discrimination can be ruled out as an explanation for the riots in France. This leaves the Islamic jihad as the only plausible explanation for the riots. I'm sure that you would agree with this, yes?

If what you say is correct, then racism and discrimination can be ruled out as an explanation for the riots in France. This leaves the Islamic jihad as the only plausible explanation for the riots. I'm sure that you would agree with this, yes?

Kurt,
There can be, of course, perfectly rational discrimation against those with low IQ's, poor work habits, bad attitudes, etc. The evidence over the years seems to indicate that many of the suburban housing project residents have those qualities.
As far as the revolt is concerned it seems to be , in part at least, reflective of the global resurgence of militant Islam. Despite the French attempt at a press blackout re the identity of the rioters I don't think there is much doubt that the vast majority of the rioters are from Muslim families. My guess would be that most of the rioters are not very religious but see Islam as a type of "ethnic" identity in opposition to French society at large. I keep thinking of Ali LaPointe, the pimp and petty thief who became a fanatical Algerian nationalist and terrorist and a key figure in the Battle of Algiers.

She feels that the french (and other European people) are much more racist than Americans are.

Chauvinistic is probably more accurate in the case of France. As a non-French person I despise their chauvinism. But I do respect the fact that 1) they know who they are and 2) they are completely confident in their culture.

France has been around a long time. The Japanese wife quoted above might consider that France wouldn't exist today if it weren't for their "racism". By the way what does she think of Japan's level of racism?

De-racinated populations won't sustain a nation for very long at all. They might administer an empire but they can't build or sustain a nation.

Ironic how "enlightened" peoples of the 21st Century hold the greatest moral value as being their own disappearance from the earth...through extreme tolerance of other peoples and other cultures. Apparently the highest virtue today is self-genocide. It's the most polite thing you can do, you see.

You basically support my point by arguing that the French do not have a recent history of being racist. There are people out there (including Ralph Peters) who argue that the French are racist. You essentially refute this argument. In which case, I think that you and I both agree that these riots are an "islamic" thing.

There is still the problem of France having a socialist economy and, thus, not allowing the kinds of entreprenuerial opportunities that immigrants to the U.S. typically benefit from. If this is the case, then one would presume that the Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants in France would be just as poor as the North Africans. Of course, since they are smarter, they are more likely to attend university and, therefor, have the leg up into professional jobs and careers that the North Africans do not. This is, of course, the 900 pound gorilla that is policially incorrect to talk about in polite society on both sides of the Atlantic.

I will add more. Consider the following:

The entire muslim world does not manufacture a single product to competitive international standards. There are more books translated from English into Japanese EACH YEAR than have been translated from English into Arabic in the past 500 years. There are probably more universities in the Tokyo area than there are in the entire muslim world.

The above facts should tell you something about muslim culture and society.

Here's something I just found.
http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/archives/001484.htmlThis article from 2003 by Olivier Guitta about the inroads made by radical Islamism in France puts B-HL in un peu de perspective:

This extremist indoctrination also extends to French schools, where non-Muslim teachers are subject to daily insults and racist remarks. For instance, the principal of the Trappes’ primary school described how an 11-year-old kid insulted his female teacher because she was not wearing the hijab. Intolerant behaviors especially against teachers and other religions have skyrocketed in the past three years. These young children are taught from the time they can walk that Islam is the answer to everything the Ultimate Truth and that is why even six-year-olds are now fasting during Ramadan.

Therefore, is not surprising that ten-year olds call for the institution of Shariah, or Koranic law, during class. Or that during a high school History lesson regarding the Crusades, a Muslim student yelled: 'Anyway, the Arabs are going to kill the Christians and the Jews.' The teacher then asked him, 'When?' and the child replied, 'I do not know. It was not mentioned on the imam’s tape.' Or that on a course on the Holocaust, Muslim children demanded to be let go to ask their imams if what they were being taught was true.

But school is not the only place in France where militant Islam is omnipresent. For example, in Avignon, Muslim extremists distribute loads of Koranic tapes in French and drive around town with their windows open and propaganda blasting through the speakers. In French hospitals, most Muslim women, sometimes under the family’s pressure, refuse to be examined by male doctors and many Muslim men by female doctors. Many Muslim defendants refuse to be tried by Jewish judges, and some municipal pools have different hours for women and men to accommodate the Muslim population. A number of supermarkets carrying non-Halaal products (food not permitted by the Koran), have been vandalized by Muslims and then surrendered to this violent blackmail by taking the products off their shelves. This is what France has become.

Islamists have the clear goal of transforming France into the first Islamist regime of the West. Their master plan is clearly formulated and being implemented every day.

I remember a report in the New York times a few months back commenting on Frances "dynamic" community of about 500,000 Chinese.

As to IQ differences between Arabs and European Caucasoids, much of it must be environmental (e.g. due to Islam), since Indians, non-European Caucasoids, in the UK converge with indigenous Britons after about 4 years. Since the cohort cited by Jensen had the mean IQ of India (like 15 points below Britain) upon arriving in the country, it could not have been due to selective migration. Also, the Maronite Lebanese in France (and elsewhere) outperform European Caucasoids. The Armenians (of which France also has many) are a small self-selected group like the Ashkanazi Jews or Parsees, so it's hard to compare them.

Interestingly, Bangladeshi and Pakastani immigrants to the UK due not converge with the indigenous Britons.

That would be astounding news of an environmental change that could raise the IQ of a cohort by 15 points in 4 years! Perhaps the antihereditarians can now uncork the champagne, and announce the revision of the heritability of IQ down to below 1/3. Maybe the initial mean IQ was obtained by testing them in a language that few of them knew well at all, but who later acquired such language knowledge.

Much of the Chinese population in France arrived as refugees from SE Asia or
illegal aliens. Chinese in the U.S. and Canada generally have come as professionals
or businessmen. So two different classes of immigrants and two different outcomes.

The Chinese are probably in a better position than the Muslim Arabs and Africans. Their
neighborhoods tend to be much less isolated and include substanial numbers of French. The
Chinese also tend to be more entrapanuerial and often can find employment in local restaurants
or stores owned by others in their ethnic community. Even if they're not neccessarily becoming
affluent, the Chinese in France have done a decent job establishing and supporting themselves
without causing too many problems. The Muslims haven't shown the same initiative and are much more
dependent on the state to support them, which has made many resentful. So as Randall said, there
are probably different trajectories.

One solution to the problems in France would be to cut taxes, deregulate industries, reform
labor laws, and encourage growth. That could do a lot to create more jobs and alleviate the
unemployment problem.

Randall, I think the problems go beyond even expectations. I've read that even successful
Arabs in France feel that the government and society are discriminating against them. These
Arab and African immigrants in France are very alienated from society.

One poster on a liberal blog claimed that non-whites are almost nonexistent in highly selective
French universities and in French corporate hierarchies.

"Just think for how many decades France was a refuge for talented American blacks fleeing"

The left loves to compare the treatment of american blacks in France to the their treatment in America. America's perception of blacks would be different if they were limited to a few thousand talented blacks. France would have a different perception of american blacks if a million untalented american blacks had fled to france.

"Much of the Chinese population in France arrived as refugees from SE Asia or
illegal aliens. Chinese in the U.S. and Canada generally have come as professionals
or businessmen. So two different classes of immigrants and two different outcomes."

The ethnic Chinese populations in the US and France aren't really all *that* different-- the US has millions of refugees too (from Mao, and of course the Vietnamese boat people), and France drew substantially from the same population. However as you say, the Chinese immigrants in both countries tend to be much better integrated, and much more successful overall, than their North African counterparts. The problem is fundamentally one of proportions. In France, the radicalized North African Muslims are a large pluarality, if not a majority of immigrants, while in the US they're a much smaller proportion of the total.

Both the US and Euro countries have different, though overlapping immigration problems. It's nice to see that even the Evening News stations are paying more attention to the problem of illegal immigration in the USA-- the problem is, illegal immigration isn't the main immigration difficulty the US is facing. It's the ridiculously high numbers of *legal* immigrants who are allowed in, millions each year, who can't be effectively integrated and who bring in millions more through chain migration, crowding our cities and putting even more environmental and social strain on already overtaxed communities. The numbers need to be cut way down, down to a couple hundred thousand a year or so or far fewer-- the way the Australians do it-- still significant and good for the economy but not overwhelming.

If a couple rare exceptions have to be implemented, fine. If it's truly indispensable for Southwestern citrus growers to bring in their seasonal Mexican immigrants working for pennies (and I even have problems with that), then fine-- but whenever it's considered to allow in so many millions of a particular group of people from one or a few countries, there'd better be a damn good reason for it.

I for one find it pathetic that now, France is talking about using affirmative action, which has utterly failed in the USA. The black ghettos in places like Detroit and Newark are vastly, vastly worse than they were when affirmative action got going in the Nixon Administration. Why? Because affirmative action was never designed to actually help poor blacks and minorities, but to make guilt-ridden liberals (and a few lame-assed WSJ conservatives) feel better about themselves by bean-counting in a few already-wealthy minorities with good connections. Who then chastise the system for not having *more* affirmative action. France is learning all the wrong lessons about US policy here.

You can look it up yourself in Arthur Jensen's THE G FACTOR. I don't think many experts are saying that in all cases that IQ is only 1/3 genetic, they're only looking at this particular group of largely non-Muslim non-European Caucasoids. Another explanation is it could be something like the Flynn effect, that after four years in Britain the tests better measured their pre-existing IQs. If it were *merely* the British environment West Indian's IQs would also converge.

Why should one group derive a bigger IQ boost benefit from immigration than another group?

I suspect there are selection effects as well. People who immigrate to go to college or to take a high tech job are way different in average ability than people who are illegal immigrants from the same source countries.

I guess if the initial test did not measure g accurately that could be a reason. Or if environoment had been holding back the Indian's IQs from their full potential but by being in a UK environment for four years they could reach that potential--wheras, say, West Indians never had the potential, that could be a reason why some groupls benefit in IQ from immigration more than others. It was unlikely that the effect was from selective migration if the inital mean IQ was around 85, which is about what India gets. Rushton and Jensen chalk it up to environment, so if there *were* a major hereditary component (re Indians in the UK) it's unlikely they'd ignore it.

So how do you explain the success of Maronite, Coptic, and Assyrian Arabs? They cannot be as self-selected as Jews and Armenians (especially MAronites).

Moreover, Malta is largely non-European Caucasoid in it's genetic make-up, and it has a very dynamic economy (don't know what the mean IQ is but guess it's not far off the rest of Europe). So it's likely that the economic and educaitonal travails of Muslim Arabs (and Persians, BErbers, PAkistanis. . . ) is mainly due to Islam rather than heredity.

But why would the environment in India hold people back from their potential more than the environment in Africa?

I'm suspicious of simple interpretations of data about south Asian immigrant groups for a basic reason: caste. India has large numbers of in-breeding groups. So it is hard to generalize about its immigrants.

What percentage of the Indian immigrants in Britain are Brahmin versus Tamil versus assorted other groups?

I think Chinese immigrants in the U.S. are much more likely to be doctors, engineers, programmers,
and businessmen. Those in France often are common people with little education, but there are
also some of more advantaged backgrounds. Though in both countries the Chinese have done better than
the North Africans and sub-saharan Africans.

Randall, the Indians in the UK tend to be overwhelmingly North Indian middle-castes. There are relatively
few Brahmins and low-caste Indians that have immigrated. There's a larger proportion of Brahmins in the
U.S., but middle-castes also predominate here.